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Guitar Cubed

The art of orchestration and ensemble playing is a bit of a challenge for most guitar players, especially those that don't play out all that much. We guitarists tend to either play too much, play conflicting parts, play in the same register, play the same exact voicing as the other guitarist, or play when we really shouldn't be playing anything at all. We've all been there and that's what Guitar Cubed is all about — a course of study focused solely on orchestrating multiple guitar parts in contemporary music.

Recording artist, stunt guitarist and TrueFire's Professor of Guitaristics pulled all the stops out on Guitar Cubed with over six hours of footage completely devoted to orchestrating multiple guitars with riffs, leads and rhythm guitar parts. Guitar Cubed is organized into a dozen lesson sets where each set features a different contemporary arrangement for bass, drums and three guitar parts. Lesson sets are comprised of eight in-depth video lessons examining every nuance of the three guitar parts, along with the why and how they work so well together.

For each of the twelve sets of eight lessons, Chris first analyzes the backing track thoroughly and then examines Guitar 1 and Guitar 2 individually.

Guitar 1 serves as the 'foundational rhythm part' while Guitar 2 provides the 'complementary rhythm part'. These sections are worth the price of admission alone as they reveal best practices for locking up with another rhythm guitar player, as well as locking up with the drummer and bass player — essential skills for anyone playing in a band situation or at a jam session.

In addition to honing your rhythm section chops, Buono also guides you through the process for crafting or improvising lead
guitar parts.

Once he reveals how the two rhythm guitars work together and interacts with the rhythm section, he'll probe into the chameleon-like Guitar 3 to illustrate how to create a third part and how to improvise a solo over the existing parts.

As usual, Buono went beyond the call of duty with the practice rhythm tracks, tab and notation that accompany the course:

Guitar 1 Tracks
Features: Just bass and drums and no other guitar parts.
How to Use: Use these tracks to practice any of the three guitar parts on their own, or invent new parts, or just improvise over.

Guitar 2 Tracks
Features: Bass, drums and the Guitar 1 part
How to Use: Use these tracks to practice the Guitar 2 parts over, or invent new parts, or just improvise over.

Guitar 3 Tracks
Features: drums, bass, Guitar 1 and Guitar 2 parts
How to Use: Use these tracks to practice the Guitar 3 parts over, or invent new parts, or just improvise over.

Track Mixes
The tracks were mixed with Guitars 1 and 2 panned hard left and right respectively. With bass and drums sitting dead center you can freely toggle between having just Guitar 1 or just Guitar 2 in the mix simply by adjusting the balance (pan) knob on your monitoring system.

As with every TrueFire course you'll have the tab, notation and Power Tab at your disposal.

Each chart includes all the parts as they accumulate. For instance, Guitar 1 will display just that, but Guitar 2 will have the part by itself on the top of the chart and then Guitars 1 and 2 doubled-staffed directly below so you can vertically examine how the parts line up. When you make it to Guitar 3, you'll see the same setup as Guitar 2, except below the lone Guitar 3 part will be a triple-staff made up of all three parts for maximum notation geek-out.

What's more, as with many of Buono's courses the audio path in Guitar Cubed was recorded direct. To do this a POD XT Live was used and all of the Tone files are included for you to load into your unit if you're a POD owner (models and compatibility may vary).

Playing with other musicians, and making great music, is the ultimate reward for all of the practice hours that we guitarists invest in our craft. Guitar Cubed will exponentially increase that reward by teaching you how to listen and how to orchestrate your parts.